Big Ideas, Little Knowledge

[AJHunter]

Hi!

I'm new to Java (obviously), but I have big ideas. Ideas bigger than my knowledge, time, or attention span. I have some very basic programming knowledge; I I've used DarkBASIC, HampsterSpeak, and can sort of figure out what a JS is doing. That's about it. So for now, I'm going to ask some simple questions. Hopefully the answers are simple, too.

First off, is there an easy way to set up a button (the GUI was built in NetBeans) to send any arbitrary Windows command to a command prompt? For example, a button issues TRACERT command with any URL the user inputs, then the output from the command prompt is written in a separate text field within the Java program. Or a button that issues the IPCONFIG /all command, then outputs the IP address, MAC address, Subnet Mask, etc., into the aforementioned text field.

[cultclassic]

What's your reason for choosing Java? Cross platform usage?

[AJHunter]

That's one reason. But mostly it was just on a whim... I do want this particular project to be platform-specific, though.

[masijade]

It's called Runtime.exec, or better ProcessBuilder. Those, however, should always be last resorts.

Edit: I.E. you can get network interface information using varying classes in the java.net package, and the JPCAP API can do treaceroute type stuff.

[Fubarable]

You don't really want to use Java for this as it's just not the right tool for this job, since in order to succeed in any way much less the most basic of ways you have to go outside the bounds of Java. This would be much better solved using a programming language that allows closer access to the OS such as C or C++ or by using a scripting language, for instance AutoIt if this is for windows.